The Norwegian government has thrown its weight behind the
Open
Document Format (ODF) by insisting that all files on official websites use
the format.
However, the mandate set out by Norway's
Ministry
of Government Administration and Reform will not come into effect until
2009.
"The government has ruled that all information on governmental websites
should be available in the HTML, PDF or ODF formats," an official statement
said.
"This decision means that the time when public documents were only available
in Microsoft Word is coming to an end."
Heidi Grande Røys, Norway's IT minister, claimed that the decision would
improve the competition between suppliers of office applications.
"'Everybody should have equal access to public information," she said. "From
2009 citizens will be able to choose which software to use in order to access
public information."
The order states that public websites should use HTML as their primary
format, use PDF 1.4 or newer or PDF/A for other documents and use ODF for files
that are meant to be edited by users.
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